Another nod.
One more tiny lie.
A few more words where I try to sound like I know the first thing about high society.
Thank God for those summers with Margot and her grandfather, or I’d be so screwed.
“I hate to hear about his passing,” a man with silver hair says.
Leonidas.
Everyone keeps bringing him up, and every mention of his name feels loaded. Even beyond the grave, he’s the center of attention.
After all, he’s the whole reason I’mhere.
Why did he make Ethan do this again?
And whyme?
I don’t belong. All the ladies around me are skinny and regal and perfectly polished. They probably weren’tbornwith body hair. And all the men look like they’re accustomed to dropping a cool two million on a beach house they use three times a year.
Breathe. Smile. Nod. Mumble.
I feel like a toy.
Ethan guides me to another group, and we repeat the same awkward song and dance. I think I’m the only one in the room getting eaten up by nerves.
He’s just as polished as everyone else, at ease in a way I can’t be.
For the first time in ages, I wonder what he’s really been up to all these years.
It was kinda abrupt, the way he enlisted and left Portland, apparently without ever looking back.
He was still just a kid.
Margot was certain he’d go right into the family business, if he didn’t breeze through college first.
Leonidas was sure, too, she’d thought.
But he didn’t.
For some reason, the Blackthorn empire only found him years later, seemingly reluctantly.
I risk glancing up at his face, holding in a gasp.
Hard jaw, lethal cheeks, the sculpted graze of stubble that makes him look older and harder than he used to be.
Jeez, everything about him is abrasive.
Is it really a surprise?
He might have gone off to do who knows what in the Army, but he was always a moody young man, just like he is now. He’s just gotten better at hiding it.
He frowns down at me, meeting my gaze in a flash of midnight eyes.
Tingles.
Uncomfortable freaking tingles spark through me like a current as my eyes dart away too fast.
